it appears to be a shiny object, but, jeremy, this could be the next topic they ll roll out. a shiny object perhaps, and a prelude to the arguments i expect to hear from the president and his allies in congress in the months ahead to build his wall. to get the funding from the congress for that. so, yes. this is really, i think, an effort to gin up the base before the midterms. the president can close down segments of the border, sure. we saw reagan do that, george w. bush did that at certain ports of entry after 9/11. this president, however, is fond of talking of using the military to execute border control operations, and that s something that it s not clear he has the legal authority to do. what s more, as my colleagues pointed out in their piece tonight on trump s plans, his talks of shutting down the
so, yes. this is really, i think, an effort to gin up the base before the midterms. the president can close down segments of the border, sure. we saw reagan do that, george w. bush did that at certain ports of entry after 9/11. this president, however, is fond of talking of using the military to execute border control operations, and that s something that it s not clear he has the legal authority to do. what s more, as my colleagues pointed out in their piece tonight on trump s plans, his talks of shutting down the border, whatever that means, there certainly would be legal action that would follow any steps the president took along these lines. so i don t think this is concrete by any stretch of the imagination yet. thank you, friends. great conversation tonight. anita kumar, jeremy peters. always a pleasure. and coming up for us, trump s approval rating technically at the highest it s been all of 2018. but is it on the move? just in the space of these few days and with just 12 da
not close the southern border. it appears to be a shiny object, but, jeremy, this could be the next topic they ll roll out. a shiny object perhaps, and a prelude to the arguments i expect to hear from the president and his allies in congress in the months ahead to build his wall. to get the funding from the congress for that. so, yes. this is really, i think, an effort to gin up the base before the midterms. the president can close down segments of the border, sure. we saw reagan do that, george w. bush did that at certain ports of entry after 9/11. this president, however, is fond of talking of using the military to execute border control operations, and that s something that it s not clear he has the legal authority to do. what s more, as my colleagues pointed out in their piece tonight on trump s plans, his talks of shutting down the
of mexico. what can the national guard troops, what can they not do, and will they be armed? there are a lot of questions here and few answers. the pentagon said they would engage most likely in things like aviation, maintenance, surveillance, logistics support, support functions for the border control operations down there. but not likely to engage in law enforcement actually moving out and detaining people trying to cross the border themselves. these will be national guard activated by the governors. the big question, of course will they be armed? will the governors want them to be armed? will the pentagon want them to be armed? the dhs secretary, department of homeland security, talked about telleri talked about it earlier, very noncommittal. mexican officials will be unarmed, is that true? we, as you know, in the past they have had in 2006 there were weapons. it has been done before.